Sparks
by l'amour-the-poet
Summary: 'It isn't always about where your heart is. It's about what you've done and what you're going to do.' They ended before they began, but there are moments they almost make it. Glimpses, tragic bloody and hopeful, into the love that almost was.
1. inside me dying

Notes: This is going to archive a series of drabbles I wrote/am writing for Defying Mythos's Chloe Sullivan Drabble Tag. They are unrelated; sometimes bloody, sometimes tragic, sometimes dirty, connected by the simple fact that I find the situations and ship compelling.

First up, _Plastique_. Davis goes back for Chloe at Isis.

* * *

They don't mean anything, premonitions.

Davis Bloome is her eerily appearing paramedic friend. He's the one who caught her as she tumbled into a fall over the steps, sweat condensing on the back of her neck as Bette's eyes shot careening flames. There has to be an unwritten communication between lost, lonely kids, because somehow, Chloe's alive and Bette's locked away in the best place for the meteor infected money can get her.

Like any aware, sensitive new age man, Davis makes her tea. He pours and there's something about the way he does it, his whole hand around the handle, the other hand keeping it steady… Davis holds her eyes a little too deeply and the cup overspills, a few drops of green liquid burning at his skin. Chloe's fingers close over the teacup with the barest rattle.

Davis is on the cusp of saying something but doesn't. She does not quite understand what she feels in regards to him, like they have a future behind them already heavy with the weight of love and aching loss. Maybe she's nervous still, but she asks him to stay the night.

* * *

Would love to know if somebody's reading!


	2. glass houses

_Doomsday, _Doomsday-controlled Davis kills Clark. Tess locks Chloe and Davis in Bele Reve.

**

* * *

**

Tess was left to do the cleanup after Doomsday did his bloody work. There were thousands dead and there were loose ends. Luthorcorp paid for Chloe's institutionalization. She had known the man that had flown with the world under his feet when he lived; she'd held one of the universes most advanced databases in her head. When they pushed her through the doors of Bele Reve she knew enough to tear the place wide open.

Chloe longed to bite and scratch at the white sleeves over her arms, but she knew from before that the glass walls around her were seamless. Escape attempts had only gotten her two chalky sweet pills and days of delirium before. So she was good, and they said they'd let her out to see other people like her. The longer she was inside, the more her past began to seem like a dream. It was her family curse and no one escaped. She needed to see anything, anyone.

Out in the rest-center, he was huddled near a wall, half doubled over and wincing like his arms were particularly deadly poison. Something about his face- the bowed mouth, the sweep of the cheekbone, the light dent in the chin stirred something in her. There were green needle marks in his arms, white cuffs on his wrists holding him as if he were perpetually crucified. It must have hurt. "My name's Chloe." His hair shagged over his eyes but she felt him stare.

"I'm not stalking you." She said the next time she found him. When he looked up at her there was a puzzled softness to the curve of his cheek, she could almost feel it against her hand. She got closer to him in increments, a yard's distance because he pumped out comfort like a small furnace, her chin on his shoulder because the place felt familiar. When she slept she dreamt he lifted her gently, free and away though his hands were prickly in her skin and she couldn't see his face.

The way they were rebuilding their bond from nothing, no memories, no past, was curious to Tess. They didn't remember the havoc they'd wreaked on the world; the savior they'd killed. They were cured, harmless together, a loose overlapping pile of limbs and awkward hands.

Chloe would look out, but the red desert sand would send Davis into a panic. He whispered to her that his hands were all red. She stopped trying to get him to look. He kissed her one day. It was gentle, soft, like a child's kiss but it burned. Then he lifted both hands so he could brush her cheek with his fingers. Chloe thought he remembered her too.

When they were alone no one stopped them. His hands were trapped between them, but his weight bore her down gently, rubbed against her somewhere deep down like where the memories trickled out of her head. He'd turned on a light for her once. She grasped at his shoulders, his back, at the loose scrubs they put him in, gasped and buckled underneath him. His eyelids shut and she took his hands, worked a hairpin against the cuffs on his wrists. They fell off him as he pressed against her. He rubbed his head against her shoulder, blinking and uncertain. "Are you trying to save me?"

Chloe shook her head, nodded, shook her head again. Maybe she wanted him to save her. She turned her head into his shoulder and breathed when he took her. Her glass house sung, shattered.


	3. and we who are about to die

_Eternal, _Davis confesses what he is and Chloe shelters him in her basement. He still wants to die.

**

* * *

**

Davis couldn't wholly remember what It did to its victims, but wild snatches would play in his head. He wasn't even human. He didn't need to sleep. At night he would stare at the jagged shadows on the ceiling and see his real self.

Before dinner was a respite as Chloe puttered up there, and he heard the clash of dishware and politely muffled curses. Afterwards, he sunk his hands in the dishwater, and she told him about other people she knew and how they'd turned out alright.

He'd tried not to look at her face, lit up soft and gold and loving in the dim lights because then he knew his resolve would fail him.

Tonight, her robe dragged against the first step, stopped and dragged again. He'd understood what the fear was like . Anyone but Chloe would have run, but she would never give up on the person he'd fooled them both into thinking he could be.

His heartbeat sped, loud in his ears and sometimes he wished he could smother it so she'd never have to see what he was, what he was going to do. Chloe couldn't see in the dark.

Her fingers bumped into his nose, outlined his eye so softly that Davis had to clench his hands together so he wouldn't kiss her right then. She'd put herself out on a limb for him, and she'd never stopped. She deserved more.

It would be better if she thought he had stopped loving her because of Braniac. If she didn't care for him, she'd feel less guilt. If she did, she'd have a reason to move on from him.

"You're awake."

"What are you doing here?" He rasped.

His body felt sweat logged and clammy and rough. He would have shaved if she had known she was coming down.

"I had a nightmare." She said carefully and he knew that it was more and less.

She made a small space for herself behind him, and her touch sent a bolt through him. He would smell her skin on his, be hard all night if he managed not to wrap his arms around her and not let go. He couldn't- but her arms felt loose and icy and his hands ached to rub warmth back into her.

"The usual response isn't snuggling up with one, Chloe."

She let out a miffed puff of breath, ignored him leaned her head over his shoulder in with slow scrape of smooth skin against his neck. He didn't know if he could move, felt his muscles fight him-just a brush, just…Chloe put his hand on his cheek and kissed it.

Her mouth was soft on his fingers, liquid and warm and it felt like he was inside her.

"That's not what I see." Her lips trembled and he turned his face into her hands, his body following on instinct. "Don't shut me out." She whispered. And he could deny her nothing. Tomorrow he would douse himself in Kryptonite, but that night Davis slept.


	4. burdens of lace

_Bride_, Chloe's been feeling a little lost before her wedding, so she takes one last sojourn into her apartment to deal with the man who's been haunting her. **Warning:** M rating for sexuality.

* * *

Chloe hedged into the room the wedding guests were just starting to fill. Ahead of her were her best friend, Lois, Jimmy laughing loudly at a dirty joke... As she walked, the garter scratched into her thigh like some primitive claim of ownership. Jimmy's, who wanted to be the one and only and hadn't cared enough to call after he'd taken her virginity. She didn't feel any warm prickle inside her at the thought that he'd be attempting to yank the garter off with his teeth after the reception. This felt like a parody, an inversion of what you heard you were supposed to do with your life. She felt dry, her legs creaking under her. It felt like she was losing the rest of her life, not starting it.

"No." She whispered, trying the word out. Clark's eyes zeroed in on her eerily. He looked suspicious and alarmed, though he couldn't have heard. It seemed all wrong somehow, how invested he was in her marriage, when he had been such a small part of her life. Why was she doing this? Her memories were skewed, like her mother's had been. It felt like something was taking control of her, something, and that was schizophrenia right there. The panic turned to a knot inside her and she was running from the uproar building behind her. Each of her steps felt lighter.

At her apartment, Chloe upended her private drawers, places Jimmy never thought to look. She drew soft fingers over a pile of computer print outs. Interviews, foster homes records, apartment leases…That was all she'd found on Davis Bloome, the heat of tension flipping dully under her skin. He'd called her three times and then he'd stopped.

It would have been wrong to answer: what kind of bride nursed such a fascination with another man? She had been a reporter who chased around stories that never came to fruition, but it seemed like she'd found it in Davis. They'd never done anything whatsoever, not until that one kiss. She'd rattled around the flower shop afterwards, desperate for his the light, fleeting touch back, wondering if… She couldn't even remember what she'd been wondering.

Chloe jumped at the quick knock at her door, five minutes before her wedding had been supposed to happen. She recognized the knock and the door was open before she realized she was moving. She stood there, naked at the shoulders, stripped bare. Davis. Her breaths didn't want to come.

His eyes lingered where the veil had fallen out of her fingers. "I'm sorry." He said. He was in street clothes, but that didn't hide the hero he wanted to be or the way his eyes clung to her, hurting. "I didn't come to stalk you. I almost blacked out, tonight. I saw your car. I thought it might help me make peace…"

"I couldn't marry him." She blurted out. "I don't think that's who I am." She giggled, haplessly. "Marrying Jimmy wasn't right. I'm not right."

Davis's dark eyes flickered in relief and worry. "Chloe…"

"Please don't leave." She was in his arms, pressed against his chest, and the heat of him trickled over her shoulders and underneath her skin. The door latched behind his fingers, and when she lifted her mouth to brush his he held her to him for the longest time.

Chloe had been losing so much time. Davis wouldn't be one of those minutes and hours she lost. She needed his memory filling her head, and he was filling her until she thought she could burst of the heat of it. Davis pushed inside her on what could have been her marriage bed; moving with increasing friction inside her, until her knuckles went white and tight over the garter he'd lowered into them. He soothed at the ringed mark it had left on her thigh, but he was so much. She couldn't remember enough of this. Chloe flinched and bit until she tasted the blood blooming over the inside of her cheek.

She'd panted through Davis's soft questions and touches, clutched at his fingers like she used to dream she had done. He confessed that his skin shattered knives, a fact that made little sense about her life in context— but it brought together one piece of the scrambled puzzle. She'd always had this feeling she would love him.

Her fingers prickled in nerves but the line of his cheekbone didn't feel invulnerable. She'd seen it shift and soften. Davis drew her palm over his face, turned soft questing lips into it. He'd loved her through his fears about himself, through her fractured memories, through her flight and near wedding to another man. He was only human and she needed him.

"Nothing in my life makes sense anymore, and I now don't want anything but you. I don't know if it's a connection between us—" Yet the feelings were like a solid, tangible thing that stirred all over her skin.

"I'll lead you back." He said, like the multiple times he had taken care of her. Davis's protectiveness was written on his face, softened behind his lips and her naïve fingers. There was a desire in his eyes that had nothing to do with the fact that she was clinging to him in a dress she'd half wrenched off.

He'd kissed her shoulders around the beading of the gown, and scoured tender sucks under her throat. He was paying attention to her pleasure but that wasn't enough. Being with Davis was falling into an increasingly deep spiral that demanded contact and movement and his hands crumpling her skirt around her waist. She rubbed up into his palm until he began to ease in and out of her body. He gave her a chance to decide what she wanted, and she edged her fingertips to his shoulders and reeled him in. He stopped controlling himself long enough to fall onto her with a series of agonized, electrifying thrusts. They evened out, slicker and deeper, but each time flickered though her face and broke her into a deeper sweat.

Chloe kissed Davis unevenly, softly fumbling for his back. She had never known good. A terrible deep feeling swelled inside her and arched her back wrackingly into the bed. His cock rubbed so thickly inside there was no nudging him where she needed, just feeling him everywhere at once as her muscles stung and burned and clutched at the throbbing slick heat of him. He swayed her neck back to nip. She was pleasure-addled and pliant. Her legs folded underneath her, and he came down on her, jerking.

She couldn't see enough of Davis. He shook in a torture of exhaled breaths, soaking and burning under her skin. She dragged against him softly, feeling him twitch and wring out inside her, his face twisting in tender ecstasy. She hadn't expected the passion between them to come this far.

Davis rubbed his nose against her cheek, shakily cuddling her against him. He was heavy and more human than she'd ever seen him. There was a small hard part in her that needed to keep him protected and safe. Chloe wrapped arms around his waist and squeezed. Her eyes met his, sticky and longing and he stumbled over her massive, torn bridal train to lift her free.


	5. nosferatu

_Beast, _after saving him from being banished to the Phantom Zone, Chloe struggles to come to terms with Clark, her feelings for Davis, and exactly what she wants.

**

* * *

**

_There are some eyes can eat you. ~Angela Carter, the Erl King_

Sometimes Chloe told herself that she didn't know just what Davis was. He wasn't man, monster, anything she could completely enclose in her arms and keep apart from the rest of her life. She knew that well enough now that she'd pushed Clark out of the center of things. Crudely put, she had no room for a life without his fated killer.

Clark couldn't be Laius and expect the world to deliver itself into his hands. A true hero always found another way; and he had some guilt stored in him, from the same compartment he had locked Lex away in. I guess I better leave now, he'd said. He had decided to find the Black Kryptonite. They were okay.

"He said you would have done it for anyone, if they were -like- me. Is it true?" Davis's eyes had cooled to the color of old blood from where he stood and there was a heartbreaking sentience in them that made it hard for her to speak. "Please tell me."

It shouldn't have surprised the both of them to know she didn't make this a habit. Clark had done this for a reason. She was wrung out with trying to decipher his motivations.  
Davis sprang to the cave opening, pressed his back against the rock like he was desperate to be touched or brushed as she walked out of the cave mouth. He'd said he couldn't live in a world without her and his eyes had glowed with a weird, ungodly light. Maybe this had become an obsession for him. Maybe it was contagious. She saw how mortal he was, in the center of the alien crystals. She just had to say the words, the right words to end the enchantment.

Chloe brushed fingers across his jaw, and closed her eyes, familiar open lines against her palms. "You've made a mark on me, just you, not the beast." she said. ""That's the reason we're running." He leaned his head against her hand catching the touch, and she didn't need to fantasize about him taking her to some candlelit domain.

"I don't care about Braniac. You're the only one. You don't need to save me for that." He whispered. Chloe just needed this- to recognize, to know. He was the same Davis who she had longed to grasp and touch and disappear into. He saw her and she didn't need to push herself against him on the ice to know that.

"I want to be marked." she breathed. Davis dragged his teeth gently across her wrist. It was cold here, cold like icy hands but it felt like her skin was melting off. The crystal fell from her fingers, a droplet of blood against the snow.


	6. miniature killers

_Injustice_, Chloe and Davis come together as Doomsday comes closer and closer to the surface. The one thing Davis never had becomes the reason he will give it all up.

* * *

It's the little things that kill. The touch of a hand, the meeting of eyes, the person you will never let go of. Chloe feels the little things, littering around her feet like a deadly strand of cobwebs as she follows Davis to the basement bed. He touches her hair softly, winds and pushes it out of her face before tracing her lips and kissing her.

She remembers that night in snatches of her memory as they run further and further, become more trapped and more cornered. She remembers the wondering shine of his eyes over her in the small bunk as she takes him away from Clark, from the fortress and a fate worse than death.

The big things get worse and worse. Sometimes his eyes go blood red when they are touching and he starts to change. Sometimes she is frightened, but she needs him more than she needs her own fear. They're on the run and she's been feeling weaker and weaker. Davis will fall into panics sometimes as It fears and rages against everything, everyone, every sound. He tamps it down with pained eyes and rubs her back and before they knows it they are giving and receiving comfort like before, softly, on the narrow bed like they can understand.

Davis stays awake longer than she does, that night, tracing her hair and holding her waist. Lying there, palm flat on her stomach, he gets a flash, a feeling, a small shift of the tiny life in side her like a black and white after image. Chloe rolls, cheek in his neck; his hand falls in a startle to her still flat belly. He can't let It kill her, kill their child.

Davis gives himself up to Oliver the next day. He's not wearing cuffs, but he holds on to the image, like it will tie him and anchor him down as the molten rock sears his face and makes him a coffin. He can hear her screaming, a tiny noise to the loosening rock. She'll have to understand someday, but the sound rips his heart a little more. He feels love cocoon him, every fiber, every cursed cell. He loves her and then he can't do much more than try to clamp the Beast down, not to scream without stopping.

Chloe clamps her arms over her stomach, cries as the understanding finally reaches Clark's eyes. She doesn't understand, not yet. It's the little things that kill.

* * *

Endnote: All due credit for this depressing storyline goes to Annybodys 'From Yesterday' Chloe/Davis video. Search it up on youtube and prepare to be awestruck. And the series has a happy ending. XD


	7. place holder

_Beast_, Oliver's biting words push Chloe into taking a step with Davis she never took before. **Warning:** Rated M for sexuality

* * *

…_You cook him dinner, you fluff his pillow, you rock him to sleep…_

Chloe had turned herself into Davis's passive, pleading nanny. She was losing him. She held onto her old life like a placeholder, while she was thousands of miles from home because she wanted to save lives. The trap made her suddenly, helplessly angry.

Chloe kissed Davis outside their rest stop with lips that tasted sweet and a little hollow. He'd given her the candy heart with shy eyes, but once in the door he was pressing her against the thin surface, burning a hard dent between her legs. His lips pried softly against hers, erratically stroking. Her jacket curled and dropped from his fingers.

She didn't doubt that Davis knew what to do with her, but it was her hands that undid his zipper, shaking with remnants of confused rage. He was—hard to get around—wetting her from simple sight. She'd never thought of herself as one of the girls who liked danger. Yet she prized that she was a calming influence on him; clutched onto evidences of his need and her own bloody fantasies.

Davis pulled her up against his skin with naked eyes, mouth grazing hers shakily. Her hands curled through the movements she needed to guide him inside her, the pit of her stomach trembling. Chloe didn't want to hear Oliver mocking at her in her head and she couldn't stand one more 'Stay away from that monster'.

He worked against her roughly, almost unwillingly when she rubbed against him with her knee. She couldn't have done it differently, giving Davis up to the government agents or to the zone, not when she had pulled the lever that had lost him to her once. She didn't want to lose him. Chloe wanted the warm flit of heat in her stomach to stop and she wanted to be rid of this—impulse that wasn't letting her do her job to save them both. Her jeans dropped to the floor for the first time.

He needed to fuck her and then she needed to find a body; maybe that would bring her to her senses. She felt herself grab at his shoulders, closing her eyes and opening her legs to rub against him. She shouldn't need him or love him. Davis grabbed onto her. "No, Chloe. I'm not going to get you pregnant. I don't know how easily it can pass on..." He closed his eyes standing there against the wall, panting. "I won't hurt you." She'd dreamed of him a little differently.

"You can't." Chloe said simply. He didn't want to die quite so much now. She reached up for his neck and let it curve to kiss her, stroking until his gentle passivity returned. She didn't know if she had reassured or hurt him; but she had gotten shaky with her choices. Her face tingled; he was looking at her and she wasn't supposed to look back.

He had grabbed her palms on his chest, so she shoved him softly backwards onto the sheets. His eyes were soft and lost and the pit of her stomach dropped. He'd wanted her love and she was mocking it. 'I'm sorry. I'm scared.' She wanted to say. But she had power so she kissed him again and soaked in the tenderness she got. Maybe he forgave easily. Maybe he loved her. Her tongue slicked small indents over his neck and stomach, and he responded with gentle gestures that made her forget to breathe. The hand in her hair, knuckles snaking over her belly button lingered on her skin as she went down on him.

Davis made a noise- the choked, small sound he had made when he died- as she took him in her mouth. Her eyes burned when one of his hands reached out for hers. She pulled away and one fisted in the back of her jacket instead. Davis raised the other to his face and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. The ends of his fingers were soft on her back as he moved with her, throbbing lightly between her lips and trying to hold still.

Want burned through her as his breathing lost control. She could deal with that. It felt good to see him panting and open eyed like this. It felt— powerful— like she was taking control back from Oliver, from this nameless creature that was fracturing him inside. Davis said things to her—the way I feel about you— but they ended up soft syllabic endearments and loves and her name this time. Chloe quickened her caresses, hoping he wouldn't be able to say any more, hoping he would by some biological miracle. He said her name once more but it was hardly recognizable.

Looking at his eyes like this was a lot like watching him fight the thing inside him. His would seek her out but at the same time he tried to push her away, tried to protect her from something that was a part of who he was.

Chloe breathed through her nose in bursts, sucking almost quicker than he came in her mouth. She sucked back need and love, hoping she wasn't going to cry. She had power. She had the power to tense him up and drive him to release and clean up afterwards. She had the power to douse water on her face and he wouldn't see. He wouldn't feel guilty when she just wasn't enough anymore.

Chloe lifted herself away from Davis, fighting the urge to back away quickly— or worse—to readjust the pillow under his head because he looked so vulnerable, still shaking a little, with the hand she'd pushed away from her fisted up. Pity and sickness and every loving impulse warred in her stomach.

His eyes swallowed her, a murky sea of need and questions. She clenched her hands to keep from touching him. She had power because he let himself need her. _He let himself._

Stay or Run. Guilt or Loss. She could almost taste the fatality. Davis looked at her changeable eyes as she rose to her feet, half-dressed and stiff. Her hands clenching and reaching, his hands on her.

"You care about me." He said softly, as if the thought had just formed itself into something whole and coherent. "You care and this is scaring you." He said again. "I don't want to leave you. I won't. I think I might be built that way."

Davis reached out and wiped her tears away with a soft thumb. Chloe could feel herself easing into his arms, into an existence that sent the placeholders of her former life spinning in their graves.


	8. the killer inside

_Prey_, Braniac-ridden Chloe finds Davis after Doomsday kills again.

* * *

Chloe found Davis outside her apartment, his head unconscious against the brick of her wall. Red puddled under his naked body and smeared as she pulled at him. There were streaked trails of blood across his chest and shoulders when he woke inside her tub in her tub, as if from a nightmare.

"You have to turn me in." He whispered.

"You've been cleared." Davis was not a murderer. It had to be a meteor infection, something against his will.

"There's only so much room for reasonable doubt, Chloe." He whispered. "It's not mine. I've done terrible things-I can't remember what."  
"We're not doing anything until I test that, okay?" She would protect him if it was the last thing she did.

Chloe didn't know how a man his size could manage to huddle in her small cream colored tub. He looked as lost and scared as a child. Chloe slipped an arm around his back where he was shivering and climbed behind him. Her jeans were sticking to her calves, sodden and red.

"Why are you doing this?" Davis asked softly, eyes wet and dazed.

'I help people' was at the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't lie again. She wasn't that good of a person. She'd killed a man. "I think I know who you are better than you do."

"What's that?" He muttered brokenly, in that half-aware way that meant he didn't expect her to answer. Things had been easy with him, like Clark. She didn't particularly like the brand of hero Clark was becoming. Jimmy had been a place-holder; only man enough to run screaming from a teenage love letter. Davis was tragic. Chloe settled her hands into his shoulders, nose against his cheek as his eyes watered.

Their first kiss, there, happened at an awkward angle over the rim of the tub. Her sleeve sopped over his shoulder, sticking to where his mouth pressed like a whisper against hers. Prickling flames were rolling under her skin, needing a handhold. She shouldn't want him here, but she needed to find out what he was, what they could be. Chloe guided his head into her shoulder, and for the first time, thanked God for the monster inside her.


	9. follies of gravitation

_Injustice_, after his attack on Neutron, Davis tries to comfort Chloe.

* * *

Chloe would rent the apartments they stayed at, and Davis would come in after he'd cleaned up. He'd sit on the corner of the bed and watch her. There was something molten about it, something that made her neck prickle as she slipped between the bed and his knees. There was something more now that she'd seen the blood on his fingers.

"You can't look at me. I can't keep on doing this knowing I make you afraid."

"It's not that." It just took a second of hesitation. The perfect, dry warmth of his palm against her neck was almost too much to take. He'd saved her life, today, even as the Beast in him tore Neutron apart. She was arguably, trying to save him with hers. They were in orbit, like two binary stars, never doing more than warming each other with their orbit.

Then Davis eclipsed her. His mouth seemed to be hot and cool at once and something about the oxygen in the room was displaced. She could have been thinking about the way things should have been. She found his fingers slipping away from hers and she scraped at the very surface of his skin with bare nails, hoping somehow she could get inside him like that.

She was afraid. She was, but not of what he thought. For the first time, the beast had killed to save a life. Inside her, her heart was the miniature killer, killing all her world but the gravity between them. His hands eased to the small of her back, contradicting the studying childlike gaze of his.

"You really don't know, do you?" Perhaps she needed him to. "I'm afraid for you." His arms went around her in soft semblance of a cradle. Chloe crawled over him and watched the crystal clear brown of his eyes. This time, hope made her stop running.


	10. night terrors

Post-_Doomsday_ split, Davis's nightmares and memories of his past are constant. So is Chloe. **Warning:** Rated M for sexuality_  
_

* * *

_****You're a special boy, Davis. The voice was cultured, fine steel.  
The men pushed needles inside him and put him in a green tank that burned like fire. There was the strangest feeling in his head- like something else was in there, gnashing its teeth. Davis wept and clutched at his hair and they would pull him out, thick hands and needle jabs.  
He's not ready yet; it'll be soon. They didn't look at him._

The guard that left him didn't look at him, either. No one was coming for him, no one would meet him. It was dark in the alley, and cold. Warrior Angel wouldn't cry, but his head ached like he was going to.

Davis just couldn't see and it was there with him, in his head, spearing his thoughts and throbbing and expanding inside his brain. Metal and glass cut him from a far-off place. There was a hot mist in his head-the guard's stunned face, pierced and gashed- this wasn't real-this couldn't be real.

He backpedaled and the spikes on his hands tore sharp into his skin. Blood- the guard's-too much to be from one body-and he remembered she was out there-somewhere close, more easily torn apart because she looked in his eyes and wanted to save him. There was already a sea of red around him-he couldn't see.  
  
Davis's vision was a misty-red when he opened his eyes, threw the door open with a skittering crash. His eyes watered at the brightness, the scents of anything but iron. Friendly light, the muted vanilla scents and the warmer smell of her skin. Chloe was leaning back in the tub, bar of soap paused where it had been gliding across her shoulder. She was alive, unhurt under the water. Her voice broke over him like clarity. "It was just a dream, Davis."

He had nightmares, memories that reshuffled themselves and left him thrashing at night, lashing out at anything in his immediate vicinity. Chloe had shown up in some of them, face twisted in unfamiliar pleasure until the screams and blood drowned her out. He'd slept on the floor after that.  
Yet, she had never locked the bathroom door even before they started running together. She left the basement door open so he could see her from the steps.

Davis closed his eyes, shook his head. "It happened once. I was in there when I turned. It's me."

"Not all of you. Come here." she said, reaching out a dripping hand to him, eyes soft and face flushed, politely staying on his face. This didn't usually happen; he slept in little more than skin because he would pour out sweat at night. It was better to avoid casual intimacy. When he found a way to die she could remember him as a roommate, a short -lived friend and he wouldn't hurt her too much.

"I'll put something on, first."

"Doesn't matter." She told him.

Chloe grabbed at him over the rim of the tub. "I don't need you to hold yourself back. You're troubled, now, not later. You said it helped you to be close." His hand was so clumsy in hers, but it hadn't always felt that way. He'd pulled her to him before, and her eyes had held his, needing something. Maybe he was flattering himself; he hadn't exactly been clear up there as of late.

"We don't have forever. It doesn't need to be like this."

"And if it's a good thing?" She pulled him into a kiss without covering herself, pale breasts and so much forbidden skin, hitched shoulders from the cold; he knew what the courage cost her. The water gently sloshed against the rim of the tub; blood pounded in his ears. She tugged him down to her. Her hands were slippery, but he couldn't have pulled out of them if he tried. And then he was there, cramped beside her in an entirely too small tub, water spilling onto the tiles.

Her skin was warm against his and she curled up on him like a comma on an 'i'. He went hard against her, softness and comfort and basic biology he needed to swallow down. She was offering herself as a friend. Davis screwed his eyes closed and breathed a breath out against the skin of her shoulder- so pale, so fragile, he could still remember the dusky color of the blood in the drain.

Davis told himself it was innocent, even when she pulled herself higher against his chest. Small tireless hands and the heady weight of love in his chest. It didn't have to be sex, but it was more than that. Chloe rested against him, palms against the rim of the tub, the beat of her heart fast and light against his as she brought herself down on him. This was fragile too. Her mouth was avid, swimming, stumbling through the pressure returned by his. Her stomach felt light and fluttery.

Davis anchored his hands, smoothed loosely at her hips. When she had control she was safe; but she terrified him when she made small helpless sounds, threw her head back so he couldn't see if she was hurting. She made hitching movements, snug around him, and quick heat of her gushed away the black place in his mind-filled it with a blind heat, a need to be deeper. He nudged his head up into her shoulder, and bit lightly at her skin. She made a ragged sound and the heat of her clamped down like a clutching embrace. Enough, almost, enough; sometimes it felt like it could never be.

He clasped to her- and there was something else inside him, something that needed to tug her writhing back down, to hear her until he could sooth the sounds away. Each push geysered water on to the rugs and tile, and he lunged up, shaking, to keep from drowning. He could survive it, but she held him like a normal man.

Davis's heart calmed and he cuddled her up higher against him. Chloe struggled for an even breath, and smiled down at the softness in his eyes. She'd haul him through this every night and one day, perhaps, she'd see the guilt and terrors leave him, in trickles, to the same place the beast had been buried long ago.


	11. truth serum

_Committed_, Chloe tries to find an answer to the psychotic jeweler's question and finds she's engaged, dizzy and at Davis's door.

* * *

"Do you have feelings for another man? I repeat, Miss Sullivan, do you have feelings for another man?"

Chloe knew that electroshock restraints on her wrists to match the lie detector were illegal cohersion. Yet, for the split moment before her new powers had crashed the device she'd thought about it. Jimmy looked grateful, but she wasn't thinking of him.

She was too busy with blurred images of close cropped brown hair, a full mouth turning up in quickly covered-up dismay. He'd been inches from moving into her personal space, spilling memories of his childhood to her mere hours after they'd met. She was unavailable, but he'd been willing to risk his job for her. Chloe wondered if he'd taste warm and minty like Clark, or like Jimmy's bubblegum, or like something more quintessentially him that she could never forget. She'd thought about being uble to brush a hand across that dress uniform of his or how he'd touch her with shame and picket fences and mortgages weighing on her mind.

She'd thought about it and now she couldn't stop. Lois told her she needed a drink. She had a couple, a warm grounding buzz through her belly jangling with the unbearable heat all over her skin. It was starting to be clear to her.

She couldn't move out of this phase of hers without knowing. He wanted her, maybe unlike anyone. Maybe he was just...

It was too late for doing this with any claim to innocence, but her hand was on the door, and thumping before she could turn and run away. The door pulled open with a sudden swing, and she couldn't see more than a tall, defined glow of blinding skin.

"I want to be around you." She choked.

She had a moment of his eyes, crinkling at the red dress in confusion and her legs feeling very strange. Before she knew it Davis's hands were up on her elbows, holding her up. "Chloe. You're burning up, how did you find me-"

"It wasn't difficult." Davis had a tidy locker, and a couple of suddenly helpful ambulance partners. "I was thinking about what you said. Only now, I think you might have to kick my ass." He let her go with loosening fingers and Chloe realized that it wasn't because he thought she was any steadier.

Davis backed up in pajama bottoms and nothing else, not like he was embarrassed, but like he was courteous enough to want to dress for her. He was getting to far away. Chloe tottered forward, pressed a hand flat onto his chest. His shoulders tightened and shivered long enough for her mouth to knock into his.

He tasted like she supposed a guy would taste after you assaulted him in the middle of the night. Toothpaste, hints of sleep and saliva and something earthy. His lips were soft but full enough, rough enough that they didn't give under hers. He couldn't get a word in if he tried, but his fingers clutched into her hips and drew her against his body. She could feel him through the flimsy fabric of her dress. His palm curved into her neck and he pulled his mouth away. She was so warm.

"What did you have?" he rasped. "Truth serum doesn't exist, you know. I just looked at the rest and I don't know if it's worth holding onto." His eyes were dark, shining, when he pulled away from her shoulder.

"I want you right now. I can't say I'll be brave enough tomorrow." Her legs had reached up to strangle his waist, and she could almost feel the friction burn of him moving, the wall scraping holes in her dress. Davis palmed her shoulder, let her down. "Please."

He had to give her something, something to tell her she wasn't an engaged idiot who'd just thrown herself at another man. His arms around her were a slow lulling heat, but she fought the release. There was hunger enough that his lips strained into her space.

"I've never felt the way I feel about you. But I'm not going to let it happen this way. You're going to want to talk about this." he said carefully. "I'll be here when you wake up. I'm not rejecting you. I want to be able to keep you."

Chloe woke up at six A.M., stomach wanting to heave, and found that there was a bucket by the side of the bed, and his arm and leg slung over hers.

* * *

I blame Rosel for this. ;)


	12. nocturnal visitations

Post-_Doomsday_ split. Separation from the Beast has broken Davis, but Chloe still has him, sometimes. **Warning:** Rated M for sexuality_  
_

* * *

There's an intrusive weight on her, warm silk pooling and dipping between her legs. Chloe can't see Davis but she can feel him. The bed dips and his fingers smooth at her forehead. He never goes one night without doing that.

He hears her heartbeat change, but she lets her breaths take on a sleeping rhythm. He's watching her. She shifts over his hand, effectively trapping it under her stomach and rubbing against it. "I like being in your spot." she mumbles.

"I don't mind." He says. Davis yelps a little when she tugs at him, rolling onto his stomach. It's for her benefit; he could pick her up with one arm, but she's grateful nevertheless.

"Are you going to make good on that?" she whispers. He rolls them back over, like a fused piece, taking this dare or challenge like everything else. Chloe can almost picture the flare of frightening knowledge in his eyes. Her life has been made of patterns for so long; there are nearly none Davis hasn't broken.

His mouth closes, lazy and wet over hers and it's minutes before she parts her lips from the caress. She turns her head away and twists. It takes Davis a moment to understand what she wants. He eases his hands under her shoulders and hips and holds her steady, her back to his chest, fingers tucked back around his thumb. He's on his back between her and the bed, this time. All she has to do is press down, fuck, find some leverage in the air somewhere, and grapple and grab and grasp until neither of them can move. Davis presses a reassuring kiss to her nape, she leans in and begins to slide sideways. This may be difficult, she thinks.

Chloe digs her knees into the mattress, rubbing down on him. "Chloe—" His protest swells into an impatient murmur.

Thankfully, she's not alone in trying to figure it out. The nightgown covers them like the cover of a circus tent. He tugs the silk up and his palm creeps up her back. His eyes aren't red but it wouldn't matter if they were.

There's the heat of his cock against her ass before she pushes down. He's through and in, warming and trembling inside her. So deep she can't help rocking the motion a little, bouncing in a desperate energetic need to prove it. His hands twist and clasp just under her breasts, urging in small snagging thrusts. Chloe inhales a fine sheen of cold sweat, blinking up at the black canvass of the ceiling as they struggle and push, slipping in a tangle of hot limbs. She misses the sight of his face twisting in pressure-tense relief. They need to see each other. They just do.

Chloe reaches out a sweat-slick hand towards the lamp, a light to see by, tightening in a spasmodic quiver. He's really pushing now, a hard jerky flow of pressure low inside her. Chloe reaches a hand back to graze his hip, digs and wriggles around, feels his head sweep completely inside her, pressing and pinching every nerve. Davis mouths her neck, the edges of his teeth digging in. The energy is just under the surface, ready to explode out in a shower of burning sparks. Everything goes to chaos. It must.

"Yes." She manages, dragging distracted fingernails over the side of his neck. "Do—Perfect—don't be— sweet."

Davis sucks the tingling through her skin and the imprints of his teeth burn bloody. The temperature and the stretch and the sharp feeling inside will kill her. "Oh god—oh—Davis…"

She slams herself back against him, a slight pop in her eardrums, bleeding and gasping and dripping wet, convulsing heat. He burrows in, pushing past the limit, relentlessly fast as she froths and twists and starts to come on top of him.

She can see nothing but flecks of light whizzing through an ocean of black. Chloe twitches, heavy undulations moving through her on instinct. The murmur in his throat warms into a cracking catch. It's in the details, the roughening pitches of his voice to be catalogued for another day. Sometimes Chloe doubts it's the reporting instincts at all.

Davis bucks and nearly throws her off him. Her pussy itches and protests the rough treatment. He's almost there too. The lancing heat through her center nearly paralyzes her. She turns to look at his face, winces for light and sees only perfect blackness. It's frightening, like the coffin she was locked in once, underground. She needs to see Davis… 'I need to turn on the light.' She wants to say; she trembles her wrists with an impatient moue.

"Shh—I'm sorry—I'm sorry—can't let you go."

His arms are like iron; his breath as humid as tears. Heavy hands come around her, needy, soft, clasping her back to his front. His fingers rub over her fists and loosen them up. Gravity clasps him back inside her again. Davis rolls them around, soft inside her, but he doesn't pull out. It suddenly feels as if he weighs a ton. As if he's here with her, extra real…

"I love you- don't forget." Davis trails soothing fingertips against her skull, presses soft whispery lips to her scalp, again and again, as if he's scared she'll fade away. "I'll keep you safe. You'll see me in the morning."

Her eyelids droop shut of their own volition. She always wanted him to stay. Drifting in a soft, satiated place, Chloe nuzzles her back against the wall. The air rustles outside the open window.

* * *

Chloe wakes up in damp sheets, her fingers clasped over her stomach, as if holding hands around her. The chill of the empty bed aches through her bones. She steps into the shower, huddles against the wall as water falls in a freezing spray on her skin. Davis had been made to die and destroy and kill. It never stopped him from dreaming. Now she dreams for him.

The reflection of her face on the shower tile looks unreal and pebbled with wet. She wants to go back. Before the cure, before Davis got hooked to all those machines and wouldn't wake up. Her reflection reaches to her neck, aching. There's a purplish, unmistakable mark on her flesh.

Chloe finally gets out of the apartment today. She runs up the stairs at Isis, breaching the security and the sacred silence of the place. Emil is taking some call from Oliver, but his eyes double take at her, hair askew, here. It's an understandable shock. Her feelings for Davis Bloome had been forceful and desperate; camouflaged in murky motivations and lies. When the one cure she hoped for turned him into a husk, she had isolated herself from her former life.

She flinches when she sees his face, the wires that go in and come out of his skin. Kryptonians have super-strength and burning vision and they can't always heal from death. Davis is on the edge of the cot, curled around three-quarters of the space. She'd never considered telekinesis among those powers.

Chloe crawls into the empty space, presses her mouth over his eyelid, slowly. "I loved you so much. " She turns toward the barely breathing body, face sheet-white and mouth a serious line. "You need to come back." She whispers; her eyes close themselves, trying.

"He's in there." She tells the doctor. There are fissures under her skin, barely visible places where she's about to fall apart.

Emil shakes the impulse to turn away. The sight is terrible. Davis hasn't so much as made a sound for weeks on end, but they'd only kept him like this in the vain hope he'd wake up on his own.

"We haven't started him on the drugs yet. It's an infinitesimally small chance that they will provoke a response; I can't conclude anything."

"You won't need them." Even with her eyes closed, she seems convinced. "Emil, if he's dreaming, he can wake up." Chloe rocks on the bed, kisses at the slack unresponsive face. Davis's hand hits the side rail with a thump. It's the morning now. It's the morning. Focus on me.

Emil shakes his head and settles back to researching intergalactic crime; it's best to give her time to resolve the feelings that are tormenting her. His assignment does not include an instruction manual on the safe handling of comatose patients.

The machine emits a startling screech in the still of the morning.


	13. through me

_Beast_, not all their nights are spent on car hoods. **Warning:** M rating for sexuality.

* * *

It is as if Chloe can't see in comparison to him. Not the indigo spectrum of colors in the night sky, the minute flushes of her skin brushing his in the darkness of their sleeping bag. Chloe gropes until she can scrub fingernails lightly against the back of his neck, digging into his earlobe when he shoves into her a little too tenderly. He holds her down a little more firmly and makes a wet, distracted sound as her pelvis twists and writhes up, close enough that she can trap his cock between her thighs.

He surges forward and stops trying for simple romance. It's an animal, ancient rhythm and that much better somehow. The sounds in his throat curl up inside her in a slow, shaky flip of need. She'd felt it before he even touched her hand.

Stubble rasps against her shoulder and he breathes jerkily. It's better, she vocalizes, but it can't come out as words. The heat rides her body and pushes the clench of his eyes into her mind until she staggers out a scream. Maybe Davis can see a shivering, jerking bundle of nerves and endorphins under her skin. Chloe feels a weakness aching through her heart, ebbing out through twitching fingers on his cheek. It's not a shameful feeling, now. She trusts him to see it.


	14. courting death

_Eternal_, Chloe tries to do what she would for anyone- help Davis deal with the non-lethal instinct side of his powers. It will never be that simple.

* * *

Chloe had watched him claw his way out of his grave, heart hammering with horror and relief. Davis let her lead him down her stairs. When she tried to find something to say, the words stuck in her throat. She cared about him; she'd killed him that very night.

Resolution would have tasted like a kiss, like hands wrapping around her, keeping her from running. She'd trudged up those stairs and locked the door to the outside world. Waited for him to fall asleep, cooked something with shaking, killer's hands.

Davis slept on a cot that was too short for his legs. Chloe saw his skin when he slept, chiseled white curves of muscle, as if he was weakening himself through sheer self loathing. She remembered what it was like to tuck herself into his arms when she was afraid.

Davis let her lead him around, tuck blankets around him and keep him in virtual lockup. He was a danger, he was a thing that was never worth loving. He thought he could break her. Chloe had fantasized about herself buying tinder, metal pokers, training Davis as he adjusted to the few abilities of his that didn't involve being torn open fro the inside out. Maybe it would help him wrestle back some control from the thing inside him, maybe it would kill Clark quicker. She was playing house with a force of nature. It was an experience just breathing his air.

"What can you tell me about this room?" She tipped onto her toes to keep her fingers over his eyes, his jeans coarse against her knees. It was pitch black, and being out of the isolation that was the basement added to his confusion. Every squeak of her floor threatened to give her away.

"Table there. Nightstand. Clothes, yours." Her face flamed in the darkness, pressed into his neck. Her bed, sheets that were rumpled from not sleeping. They didn't have to be alone.

"What does it smell like?"

"It smells warm." he swallowed. "Chloe-"

The thing inside him had messed him up. But even the beast would seek out warmth and recognition and safety. She smelled like arousal and his skin. Davis hauled her against his chest, breathing in the scent of peace and Chloe.

Her hands fell away. She couldn't see anything but the shine of his eyes on hers, even when he'd promised her he'd moved on. Stay please. She kissed him, lips dry and rough and lipstick less. He didn't stumble away from her, but he hadn't even tried to get away while she killed him. He clung to her, bit her, sucked her with a mouth that was feverish. He couldn't always tell what she wanted, but this moment he would always be perfect.

His fingers bruised her, light clutching marks between her and the bed. His mouth didn't taste like blood and death, and he didn't feel like it, with how tenderly he slid against her and into her. They didn't move together; they were drowning. Warmth twisted in her stomach. Davis had choked out he loved her, made her understand that he wanted her when his lips had brushed all the air from her lungs.

Davis could see her like it was daylight, wide, sticky eyes and the bruised pink of her mouth. "I'll stay with you now." she whispered. "Please."

His clothes hung on her petite form hugely. Sleeves loose and green-stained with acid rock slid through his hands, to the floor, whispering. Chloe felt his jaw work, tightness against her palm and into her shoulder. His sob was muffled into her hair.


	15. steady now

_Plastique_, Chloe takes on Davis, counseling and feelings she shouldn't be having again.

* * *

She was the RBB's to-go person and reasonably capable under pressure. It was unexplainable, how Davis had screwed in a lightbulb and squeezed the air out of her world. His eyes had flickered to her mouth and in one minute she had admitted she found him attractive administering oxygen in a uniform or in an off hour form-fitting t-shirt.

Not even four cups of coffee would quell the anticipation in her gut. She hadn't felt like this in a while. Whether she was willing to toss away a plastic ring and screw him right there on the floor was something else entirely. He hadn't kissed her. Maybe he was just one of those guys who could have chemistry with a table lamp. Bette was a teenager and she hadn't been entirely expected it to be that, one stop in her long love affair with the unattainable.

Yet, by the time he started talking about his childhood and held onto her like he was going to crumble, she found herself without a roadmap. With one fear-laced confession, he'd changed the course of her life into counseling the meteor infected. But she was young, girlish and not exactly streetwise so she needed a partner for the seedier parts of town. He could help her too.

Davis knew what it was like to feel like a dangerous freak, though he would call her just before a blackout would come on. Over the weeks, they seemed to lessen. They were both connected by much more than a rush of hormones, she thought, just about the time she started feeling them unbearably.

Chloe found herself sitting in his ambulance on the way to one of their new patients. She didn't feel replaceable, not even remotely. Chloe reached over, patted his thigh and felt the car jolt when he slammed on the breaks. "Thank you." She whispered.

They had time.


	16. black knight

Post-AU _Doomsday_, the black kryptonite leaves Davis comatose and broken, but when General Zod uses him tear down the world it seems Chloe has nothing left to lose. On a suicide mission to save what's left of the world, all that remain are the memories. Sometimes they are enough.

* * *

Chloe had known Davis at his worst, tried to hold the soft-eyed, heroic man she remembered together in a small, desperate hand. She'd grasped onto his fingers, long treks across states, fingers to lips, hotel bed to hotel bed. She'd split him, watched Doomsday emerge from him like a malevolent twin. She'd held his hands as his eyes went glassy and his signals flat lined. He hadn't been able to live in parts. She'd been lost, and then she'd started fighting.

Chloe plugs herself into the system of the solar towers, locks herself inside with raw Kryptonite lining every wall. She pours all of herself into the task of shutting them off. The video feeds show soldiers collapsing with Oliver's Kryptonite vapor in the air, the one he'd made before they'd gotten him too.

A movement arrests her hands. There's one left standing. Davis is whole again; Doomsday, Zod had called it his better half, a prominent display of the power he will unleash on the servile world.

He looks different now, the softer planes of his face chiseled into something mechanic. Davis's hair had been surprisingly soft the first time she'd really let herself touch him. It's in a buzz cut now. A soldier, she thinks. He's Zod's soldier now.

'Davis,' she hears herself choke.

"That's not my name." he says harshly.

She slides out of the chair for a panicked instant. A gun clicks blindly in her hand. He's not Davis, not her Davis. He doesn't remember a thing about her, and to kill is all he knows. Clark hadn't come back, the second fight.

"I hear you moving up there." he says, voice pitched low. His eyes are two empty holes, boring through the camera, making the breaths stick in her chest. He's gone and she hears the wall fall under the impact of a body, watches hundreds of green talismans crumble.

"You said I was hard to miss." she whispers. She bites back the impulses of her eyes to turn to him, the sick, sick longing she still feels to dig Davis out of the rubble of what they've made him. On the screen, a firewall goes down. There are two more to go.

"I won't let you destroy us." He says. What's left of Davis has a fanatical love for his father, but to him he's only a tool, a perfect, deadly replica of the son he lost and could never love.  
"I'll keep doing it, so you might as well kill me."

He grabs her by the shoulders, the Kryptonite burns on his hands visibly healing. She flinches almost immediately, the heat of his skin and the fact he doesn't see her, not anymore."I won't hurt you." he says. "I don't kill women. Get out."

She can feel the heat coming off him, a slow wave of perspiration, the awkwardness of his hands on her, like he hasn't touched a woman in forever. He doesn't remember how he touched her.

"My name is Chloe." she says. "You said you loved me, once."

"He said they'd send you to lie."

There's nothing, none of the vulnerable softness in his face. His hands stiffen on her shoulders, but there's something, some unsure flicker in his eyes that emboldens her. "You used to curl around me in your sleep. You used to touch my face so much it made me crazy."

His lips open, a soft dent and rush of air. "I don't touch..."

She draws a thumb down his cheek and he freezes entirely. There are things in the back of her head, things she's learned, the place on a man's neck, you apply just enough pressure and he's paralyzed. She watches his face shift, a motion, into her palm. Davis doesn't move and she remembers before, the night dappled in blackness and his back to the open window, the heat of his breath in her mouth. Her hand seems to move of its own volition to his mouth and her lips follow, catching remnants of softness, a gentle movement and the hardness of his living body, a familiar heat again.

Davis jerks away, panting. "No." One more firewall de-encrypts. Another soldier suffocates to death. "No. Please. No."

Chloe takes another step forward. "I'll keep doing it; you could kill me. My friends are dead. The man I love doesn't remember me."

"I don't kill women." Davis mumbles softly, over and over again, like a child with a Sunday school litany. She touches his neck, the space, the paralyzing space, and cups the back of his head, rasping at her hand. She's not going to do it. She can't when this is the last him she'll ever have.

Her arms go numb struggling to hold him to her, but he's not really fighting. Davis slumps against the wall finally, in her bruised, desperate hands. His lips breathe into a soft hollow in her shoulder and touch. She closes her eyes.

"I dream of you." he whispers, voice wondering, terrifying in the night.  
The last firewall falls.


	17. love will cover me

_Stiletto_, Chloe gets dragged down the steps with AJ and witnesses the one thing that can destroy her relationship with Davis.

* * *

"It's all over you." Davis murmured protectively. He knew the scent better than anyone. She just needed to get it out of her eyes. Chloe felt like limp rag in his arms as he pulled her under the showerhead, too panicked to dress himself.

It was his paramedic mode acting up and she'd never felt more cared for. Davis's hands were steady, but Chloe couldn't see his eyes. The air hardened her skin under the vibrant red shirt his hands peeled away. His fingers brushed it off her skin, uncoiling heat and Chloe knew that even if her eyes could not turn to him, her body would. She bit back a shudder. His arms were flush over her shoulders, not ungentle, and the back of his hand rubbed against her nipples and made her shut her eyes.

For a moment, she stopped seeing the red. Chloe had always thought that maybe her imagination could conjure up worse things than how** It** killed until AJ had grabbed hold of her ankle, pulled her down the steps to Davis's other dragged him back. It would never hurt her. It protected what it took for its mate. AJ's blood had misted her face and she had been too frozen to flinch.

Chloe tensed and automatically sputtered as the freezing water hit her chest. Davis's touch soothed across her belly. Gradually, the water warmed and she could swipe the blood off her eyelids. She needed to turn back to him, bury her head in his chest. She went limp and he held her closer. When they got out Davis would be a little more haunted, a little more hopeless; she'd have to fight for his touch. His nose pressed into the crook of her neck, his breath was slow and hot and staggered in pain and longing. It was the closest she had to a kiss. This way he was hers. All hers.


	18. behind me the beast

Post-_Beast_, sometimes through Davis, Chloe touches Doomsday. **Warning:** Rated M for sexuality.

* * *

Chloe had never set out to cure Davis with sex; it was a byproduct of things that they felt and kept under rapse for too long. Touch and heat were the silver-lining to the massively dark cloud of destruction, the destiny that rode on his shoulders like the famed albatross.

Davis's other half was a creature brutally engineered from the deadliest species on Krypton. Doomsday was part of Davis's DNA, not something that could be shooed away with a black meteor rock. It wasn't her pet, but sometimes Chloe felt it held the fascination with comfort or even soft female parts- an attraction a la Frankenstein to its Bride. She was hardly screeching and attempting to kill herself, but there was always a counterpart.

Davis tried to be a shield between her and it so she'd never really seen him change. It was dark tonight. Davis's fingers dug bruises into her hipbones and his palms soothed them away the next. His cock was hitting that spot that made her cry out; she only tamed that under a brutal nip at his throat.

Davis would press his lips to hers and whisper soft things into her skin when it hadn't been too long. Times like this, he'd make low grunts of pleasure and the dry heat of his breath seemed like the winds from his home Planet. The alien feeling of orgasm rippled through Chloe like a force of nature while spines retreated to deep under Davis's skin.

Davis held her so close after; switched on the light and ran his hands softly down trembling, slick thighs. His thumb brushed at her unmarked hip. The fact that the bruises instantly faded into her skin puzzled him, but Chloe felt her mouth twist up. One of these days, he would take that as a challenge. For now, she pulled up on exhausted muscles and let herself touch him.

"Chloe, you don't need to..." She felt his body tense as she pressed lips into his shoulder, a half-memory of how he changed.

"Shhh..." She let her lips drift lower, against his spine, watched his hands twist and loosen over the pillow. She thought mostly of Davis, the soft look in his eyes and how she'd only ever felt for him. And then, in times like these, she thought of the lonely creature locked in him in a cycle of constant pain and hoped it felt the touch too.


	19. through the looking glass

Post-_Injustice_, Oliver traps Davis in space to stop Doomsday. Chloe plays stowaway.

* * *

Upon waking, it seemed to Chloe that the sterile, uneven bunk she rested on breathed. Her eyelids flickered with incipient panic and then she remembered. There had been no way for Doomsday and humanity to coexist; so Oliver locked Davis and his alter-ego into a prison with renewable supplies and launched him into space. Clark hadn't realized there was a stowaway until too late. Davis had realized as soon as she set foot in there, but he never really wanted to lose her. And then, futuristic space prisons made decent accommodations for groping partners-in-crime-cum-lovers.

Davis made a soft noise, trying to find some company in the dark and his nose fell into the hollow between her breasts. Chloe took a moment to study his half-asleep face, lethal in its innocence and lit by the kaleidoscope of stars in the night sky. She had crawled two inches very deliberately over the tangle of sheets on his stomach before his mouth mumbled "Need water? Cold?"

"I need a few pillows to sit on, actually." She mumbled, red creeping its way across her exposed skin. He'd been gentle, but he'd tipped her forward, tight inside her. They'd never done it that way.

"Sor—"

"Naw. Hey. Look." Chloe's fingers felt at the window; sheets of clear material that were utterly unbreakable, made and remade themselves even if Doomsday had any reason to attack them. Lights streaked past, stars clearer than they had ever been for them as they made plans for improbable futures on car hoods.

Davis chuckled at how she tried to touch the imprints of the stars blurring past her. It wasn't Wonderland, all upside down and topsy-turvy and distorted by reflections of what the world needed of her. It was all hers. He was hers.

"It's not so bad then, staying here?" He asked. With me, the subtext said.

"It's just next to perfect." She said.

His fingers wrapped around hers, and he pressed his lips to her hand, courtly and fitting with the Scorpio constellation and his not-so-lost love gleaming down on them. "I'll try and live up to that."

Chloe held the moment and then cocked her head. "So was Oliver nice enough to send pillows?"


	20. death by design

Post-_Injustice_, Chloe takes extreme measures to save Davis from a resurrected Zod's control. **Warning:** M rating for sexuality.

* * *

Heroes were unable to put someone's life before the world. They wouldn't get involved, drag him across the country and away, wouldn't hide underground like rats in a cage, wouldn't enjoy being fucked softly in a tiny cell. Heroes lectured on principles, dressed in bright colors and waited for their enemies to take potshots at them. No wonder Zod almost had the world under his thumb. Locked up with the Ultimate Destroyer, she'd play the cards anyway she needed to keep him. She's stopped wondering if it was stupidity or bravery.

Chloe admitted Davis had her- flat out, on her hands against the wall. His hands were gentle, almost hesitant against her breasts, body firm like when he held her. It had only taken a few words, a glance, a touch that lingered a moment too long to take him. He was painfully gentle, painfully aware of her, struggling with himself, but he was too aroused not to bump against her. She breathed in through her mouth, tried not to gape at his cock nudging against the back of her thigh.

Her skin gave a little, moistened at his gentle drag against her. She felt how hard he was, wondered if that could break her. She tried to twist her head, see his eyes, hot and intent on her face as his fingers smoothed and tingled and stiffened on her nipples. It was as if he was fucking her but softer, dimmer. It wasn't enough for her.

She rammed him inside her, barely aware until he was in deep and his eyes were blinking hard. Her muscles bunched, shifted, every cell of her protested the fullness. Fingers tugged at hers, a plea for permission? Davis was breathing ragged. Chloe could feel her heart slamming against her ribs so loud it had to be deafening him.

As himself Davis would never hurt her. Davis would have been gentle, precisely because that wasn't what he needed, but she clenched and bullied and blinded him. His hips pumped down to hers, faster until her breath choked, slower- only by an increment but she shook in frustration.

She couldn't mouth a single protest that didn't come out a moan. He was rougher then, merciless shoves that shook through his hands on hers, shook against his teeth on her neck. For one sweltering moment, she went blind. The desperate clutching turned to long liquid tugs inside her. She was nearly limp against the wall when she felt him start to come, grasping, feral as an animal. Her head was dizzy and whirling, swamped in painful pleasure. Chloe dug in fingers, tried to keep from sliding down to her knees.

Inside her prickled, acutely sensitive and she twisted, teeth clamped on her lip. She could scream here. Zod wouldn't find Davis, wouldn't use him. The green Kryptonite walls would incapacitate him and Davis was immune.

Davis's shoulders started to shift. He wasn't done yet, and Chloe wondered if the Doomsday part of him needed to make its mate bleed. She'd found Davis after it killed once, blood on his mouth from where Doomsday had dug into some criminals neck. His mouth found her neck, adjusted, and he licked slowly.


	21. petit mort

Post AU-_Doomsday_. After Davis is split, Chloe has to deal with the consequences of his search for redemption. **Warning:** Rated M for sexuality.

* * *

"You know, you don't have to be my all purpose crutch. You've been very kind, watching over me." Davis looks at her with warm, giving eyes. She slides her hand to his side, keeping the towel up as he walks to the shower. "I'm fine." He says stubbornly. He's probably thinking of her deadline, the idiot.

"You're fine? You're too weak to walk on your own."

"'I'm getting my strength back."

"It was different with Doomsday inside you."

He doesn't have to do this to himself. No one blames him for what he was. At least, she doesn't. He's scared, she thinks. Scared of this life now.

Chloe turns her back, feels herself shrugging archly. "Davis, you're sensible. I haven't seen that from you. Prove it, or I'm going to get Oliver to pull strings and put you on leave."

He slides a callused, shaky hand to her shoulder and hugs her away from the door.

* * *

Chloe's fingers slide down the shower curtain, slipping over wetness that could have been blood. Palms brace on it as she falls forward, her muscles clenching before they have a cock to close on. The plastic tears in a short, dirty rip through her nails. She feels herself hauled back, and bumped forward by a deep, needy thrust.

She got her divorce a little more than three months ago. Davis had been split two months and a day ago. He'd returned to helping people with soothing hands and a smile doing heroics this time; he still had panic attacks at night. They decided to be friends, while she figured the rest out.

They ate well-lighted dinners together and teased each other about silly things, a protective habit of living together for fear-thick months on the run. Chloe saw Davis as her heroic paramedic friend again, even if he was haunted. He saw her as the one person who'd had the courage to love him. It was unspoken where it would go sometime.

She couldn't have thought of this. It's quick and rough, tingling rawness between her legs and the rasp of stubble against the side of her neck. Hands plunge and grope softly into her, penetrating and rubbing her roughly to orgasm. There had been nothing hasty about how Davis had made his feelings known; he'd made and remade his rounds their first time.

Chloe shoves her fists back on the tile, shaky, skin pebbling; the wet heat where his body joins hers rubs raw. She needs it just like this. Davis makes noise, a pained gasp much different from when he was hit by the robber's five Kryptonite bullets in the back. He jerks, once twice and she shivers and relaxes into the bloom of wetness between her legs.

She pants, catching little finishing tingles as he rolls them to their sides.  
"Thank you." The moment is awkward. It's been a while, and the tumble into intimacy was unplanned. "Chloe- I missed-."

"So did I." There's a rush of closeness, of safety and warmth she's felt with him at the most inappropriate times. "I'll never be ready to lose you." she murmurs, more conscious of the stutter that wants to come out. She'll never take him for granted again.

His fingers touch and wind through hers over the drain and Davis hugs her against his front. Sweat drips into her mouth; she tastes rapture and gnawing relief. That was close.


	22. my tether, my chain

Post-_Beast_. Davis's status as a serial killer makes Chloe a target. After attacking a police officer, he tries to free her in the only way he knows how.

* * *

Chloe wriggled her wrists in her restraints-metal, heavy, thick. She and Davis had been doing so well until the last police officer saw his best chance at the cornfield killer as threatening to shoot her in the head. Davis lunged for his throat before he could twitch a finger on the trigger.

"I'm sorry." He kept mumbling. Her eyes were drawn to blood dribbling down his lips, lips that had just been fangs. "Didn't mean…didn't…" He checked his pulse and bandaged him up, but that guy would need a transfusion.

"Can you get the key, Davis? I know someone…" Davis leaned over her and took her in his arms like a doll, brought her onto the bed in the next room where she wouldn't have to see the body. She'd told him about her fears, the coffin, small cramped spaces. He still wasn't moving for the keys.

"Davis! Get me out."

"You won't have to see this again." He whispered. His hands were gentle on her cheeks, lingering, and he didn't kiss her because they hadn't since that first time. He smoothed the sweat and hair from her face and she felt something.

He pulled away. The number for Clark was dialed; her phone had GPS and her chest hurt like something was being torn out. "You're not going to let him take you away from me." She said.  
"I'm not going to take your life away."

"You're letting it happen." Perhaps the tears were what made him come closer, comfort and his breath hissing out painfully, Chloe rubbed her cheek against and caught his mouth, warm and helpless and surrendering against hers to the taste of iron.

When Davis pulled away his eyes were dilated, dazed. "No."

"Clark made me forget."

"How -" Davis breathed.

"I cared about you then." She whispered. "Maybe I could've changed things. Maybe not. I wanted - I don't know- I wanted to make the choice."

The truth was, she'd never let herself. Davis said she had saved him once, but it was his choice now. Her life was his breath catching, the fragile heat in her chest and the patched up body breathing on the rug._ Now._

Davis's fingers gathered up her wrists, all of her, and the phone shrilled mournfully in the dark. 


	23. on the road to nowhere, somewhere

_Beast_, the road away from Smallville and the beast forcing its way out of Davis tries Chloe, but sometimes he's the only thing that matters.

* * *

Saving Davis had never been meant to be a business transaction. Their intimacies had been rushed, crammed into the lofty goal of saving his humanity. Along the road they'd often find themselves in poorly sanitized rooms, fall asleep in a bed that wasn't long enough for his legs.

Davis's eyes would look on her waveringly, like she was a guardian angel medal tucked around his was afraid of what he could become, afraid of losing hold of his besieged consciousness. She was the only focus that he could cling to. Saving lives was well and good, but he'd remembered what he'd done to accomplish it. He barely saw himself as human now. Doomsday crept out through the cracks.

As time passed, he could barely not touch her without becoming vulnerable to mindless fears and terrors. Chloe had him. But he was careful, so careful to encircle her hands with his, not to accidentally brush a place that would test her martyrdom. The air burned in the desert and he didn't make it any cooler.

He breathed in gentle huffs that brushed the nape of her neck. Davis didn't think she was doing this for him. She couldn't sleep much; Clark was like a guilty weight that settled in her stomach. Would he look for her? Wouldn't he? She felt her brain click and whir while she breathed slowly. She hated playing them both like this. Maybe one day she'd tell the truth. _It's not much. _Chloe felt a second of his lips pressed to her skin. _I love you_, he breathed.

Chloe wished she could tell the truth. Time was not on their side. She wrapped her hand around his, and for the first time, he knew she'd heard.


	24. safety brake

Post-_Odyssey, C_hloe tries to deal with Braniac's meddling with her senses and her connection to Davis.

* * *

"Somehow I think Tommy will react better to a pretty lady than me." Davis was the one who had the idea to help the meteor infected from his ambulance. Whenever one of his patients dematerialized, she was his first call.

When they wanted her help he'd let her know. He tagged along with her . She didn't know whether it was his streetwise nature or a sense of chivalry, but she appreciated it.

As soon the button with the second floor dinged, he wrapped his hands roughly around the rail, muscles tight under his blue paramedic shirt. Davis had long, large fingers her eyes couldn't stay away from, even mostly. His hands were clenched gently enough that she had a thought of how they would feel in her hair. He wasn't doing it to be suggestive. He was slouching a little in his straight-backed pose and there were faint lines at the corner of his eyes.

"I don't know, can you string three sentences together?" She asked. "What if you fall over? You're not the kind of guy to play damsel."

"Don't underestimate yourself. You helped Bette; I trust you to pick me up." Then he smiled, soft and jokey and eyes so very not it stopped her in mid-flirt. "There's a first time for all of us and I-"Chloe knew what he was going to say with his eyes so very sincere on hers, and then for the briefest second on her mouth like before but this time there was no gaudy bauble on her finger. She wasn't ready for this. She'd just gotten out of a governmental testing facility, broken up with the guy that proposed to her, gotten possessed by a database she knew little about.

She woke up at night with binary codes and ice-eyed interrogators troubling her dreams, but she couldn't open her mouth to say it when Davis looked at her like that. Chloe watched him, worried at her lip, didn't think fast enough- and then his lips had nudged into her space, close enough to hers that there was no point in not doing anything. They tingled her saliva-wet ones, and his muscles weren't sagging so she couldn't feel the length of him against her. She licked his cheek, felt his teeth suckling pressure against her neck, blunt fingers brushing low against her stomach light as butterfly's wings. The heavy hot feel of him inside built to a tiny gasp.

She opened her eyes to him gently shaking her by the shoulders. "Chloe- you scared me- you stopped moving." The elevator hadn't even gotten to the third floor yet. She was officially, bat shit crazy.

"I'm sorry-I had a moment. We were going to see Tommy?"His eyes were puzzled by her mortified face, the sudden brittleness in her voice.

Later he'd show up at her apartment with coffee, offer to be her shoulder. He'd kiss her in her kitchen. Yet, Davis was too much of a nice guy to say anything about the way she crossed her arms over her breasts right then, struggling with the shiver of heat going through her.


	25. lay your body down

_Eternal_, Chloe stays in the basement with Davis and tries to stop mourning him. **Warning:** M rating for sexuality.

**

* * *

**

Davis has barely spoken, his voice husky and low since she found him here. Chloe doesn't remember if five minutes or fifty passed- only that he's supposed to be saying it some other way. Not like this, not like it's a death sentence. _Stay . Please. _

She touches him first, tastes the pain hot in his throat. His mouth notches to hers, trembling her lips with wet, unnaccustomed heat. It's not a thing she can soothe. Not a thing she can stop.

She hasn't stop missing Davis since he died and maybe this is why she bruises her own knees on the weave of the bedspread, trying obscure the way his eyes hurt her now, the ashamed gentleness of his hands stripping her down.

Chloe fancies she can hear the beast rumbling through his naked heartbeat against her back. His cock burns at her ass, harder and cruder and more than anything with Jimmy ever could have been. If Davis thrusts too hard she can take it, take it and give back to him for once.

His lips scatter heat on her shoulder and she gnaws into her lip. The gesture is like the old Davis, the one with the hope inside him still. Davis's knuckles are digging into her back, not much, not a little- pressed hot against the screaming in her heart.

It's dark, but out there is where the terrors lie- the green stained floors that were witness to the fading red in his eyes, the dead weight of his body. He strains, opening her up, but that is nothing now- nothing to the tearing hole in her world. She's still mourning him, somehow.

Chloe hides her face in her hands, takes in tiny catching breaths as he begins to move in earnest. Davis presses his cheek against her shoulder, holds her still with the steady pressure of teeth. It's comforting, as he takes her like this. Almost enough, almost brutal... Until her lungs strain at his weight, the thickness of his thrusts, and her body plummets hard. Beautiful, _easy_, just like she knew it'd be.

When he comes, he chokes out her name. He must need her on her knees or at least to fold up in his arms as when his breath hitches. There is a small shaft of light peering through the keyhole as Davis draws her hand up and nibbles the saline from her fingers.


	26. do you love me, now?

Post-_Doomsday, _an injured Davis wonders what it means to have Chloe.

* * *

Davis Bloome had his future planned at twelve, sketched out on a grimy notebook at his third foster home. Work hard, get through paramedic school, get certified, find someone to care for, maybe build a home, all the steps in between. With Chloe, Davis would flounder for the words to keep her close. He'd had no five-step plan when he'd first seen her calling across the choked, smoky street. He'd only known in his gut, churning, that she was calling to him.

She'd run away with him when he was at his worst, a floundering man with darkness leaching into what was left of his dreams. She'd saved him, and let him put his arms around her and slept next to him under warm blankets in a drafty basement; she'd cared. And months in, he had found himself holding a small ring in his palm, under a candy heart. He'd seen the tears in Chloe's eyes and he thought to himself, you fool.

He had not planned for the havoc Doomsday would wreak on her life the same way he had not been prepared for her small white hand pressing the rock to his chest to free her from it. He'd seen the darkness given a face, and survived by a hair. When he'd woken, under a swathe of blankets, she'd tugged his bandaged palm into her lap and kissed it. I love you, you know, she'd whispered. The tubes down his throat wouldn't let him speak; they didn't know how long he'd last like this. She watched his fingers, twitching in his lap, his thumb up toward the bloody jacket they'd cut off him. Chloe didn't say anything when she found the ring inside, but it looked right on her hand.


	27. to love is to bury

_Savior_, Chloe tries to reconcile the Davis that tried to kill her and the Davis she's running away with.

* * *

Davis curls around himself when he sleeps. Chloe is on the road with him again, but the ties to home are cancerous in the corners of her mind. Jimmy is hissing that he is a monster through his gray lips; Clark is begging to know what she is feeling for once. Oliver tells her to never come back.

So why? For what? Why is she doing this again? Do they even know each other? They aren't the same people they thought they were. She thought he'd died hating her- didn't even know it wasn't him until Emil tested the blood. An individual with mutant cells like his couldn't just die, but a copy could. They found rows of tanks in 33.1. They found the real him in a cage.

They've lived completely alternate lives apart. Davis remembers the searing in his skin and her palm covering his through the glass. She remembers a man with his face ramming a metal pipe through Jimmy's heart.

She doesn't know what Tess had done with him in the weeks after his death. He never gets around to speaking of it.

It's like the way she never speaks about how she'd been guilty enough, fucked up enough to throw herself back at Jimmy because she couldn't deal with the way she felt about him. That other him. She never tells him about the guilt- the way she kept burying the mourning under layer after layer of hate and resentment and lust. She's run her hand along the tanks now, seen the others, seen the strands of her hair and the little mementoes Tess had planted to make him think it was real.

He'd been unbalanced, but he'd never been meant for anything else. It was a good trick. Lex had taught Tess, after all. Chloe never tells Davis- the true Davis- about why she was with Oliver, the name he'd let her call him. It was never the girl but the act that he liked. She'd wanted to hurt Davis, wanted to touch him, wanted to stop seeing that broken look in his face before he'd died. The pleasure had been quick, easy- Oliver could fuck in his sleep and without opening his eyes. His hands had felt cold and wrong.

Chloe feels cheap now, cleaning the burns on Davis's back, pretending to be kind. Deep down she's no better than Oliver. There was one thing she wanted from Davis, this him, the other him- and it wasn't to save him.

The space between them is gaping and bloody. He still loves her, she knows that. It lights every insignificant glance he sends her way like a neon sign. it would destroy her if she lost him again. Yet the space widens every time he drives them to another hotel, settles alone in the bed across from hers, jerks in his sleep. He needs her help again and -she can't. She hadn't even known him from a copy. What can she say?

Chloe can feel him come awake with the quiet jerk of a wounded animal. His fingers are gripping her wrists tight enough to snap the bone when he realizes where he is, rubs them in an unconscious soothing motion..

"Is it time to leave now?" He rasps. "Do you want to go?" It strikes her that he isn't a psychopath or Tess's game piece. He's the only man in her life that's ever asked her what she wanted, and she's punished him for it, again and again."I'm sorry." Chloe says.

She can't seem to say anything else. He just looks at her when she won't explain, jumps a little when she touches him. His chest is the only place that still feels smooth under her fingertips, still warm. She didn't put the arrow in his chest but she could have. "I'm sorry you got hurt."

"I don't understand." He whispers. Her hand traces for his mouth. "I'm sorry for killing you." _You were the only one who ever loved me._

His lips part a little and she leans forward, lets herself have the fantasy for a little while. He isn't practiced at this, but his mouth is warm and full and sweet on hers or maybe that's what it's supposed to feel like when you kiss somebody.

She wilts into him like a broken doll, hunkers against his shoulder, clings to his mouth. Inside Chloe something ugly is breaking loose. She can't look down, can't be quiet. "I might as well have killed you again. I made him trust me."

"But he wasn't me. You're not to blame for what was done to him." Only, she was. He'd been like Davis when the Luthors took him in and discarded him. A virtual newborn and she'd left him to self destruct. "He could have been you."

"Tess obtained his DNA, built the prototype, programmed him to react the way he did. He would have chosen to live- if he had known you, loved you, he wouldn't been able to help that."

"If I had been stronger..."

"You didn't have to do anything." He says simply, thumb drawing up to her back. "I came alive when I met you."


	28. war out of my history

Post-_Doomsday_, Chloe's plan to free Davis into a new existence involved giving him up. She has a relapse. Crossover with Being Human (US).

* * *

"You."

There was a prickling on the back of her neck, thick like a hunger. Chloe couldn't hear a crackle before she turned, not a telltale rasp of breath or rustle of his clothing. Nothing. She put it down another one of those intangibles that used to be between them that she could feel Davis before she saw his face. A connection. All she needed was one of those billowy satin gowns so she could be some modern day Mina Harker.

He looked different stepping out of the shadows behind her. His skin was paler, hair more mussed, face thinner and quicker with a smile. He looked like he could be happy. It hurt a little, made it harder to breathe, but that was the way it had always been. "Version two of Davis Bloome and you still don't learn how to make a noise."

"I never thought that I would surprise you." He said.

She knew it was him. His eyes had never changed, melting brown and fixed on her like there was nowhere else he wanted to look. Now that he was here she wasn't quite sure if she wanted him to look at her or not. He was just-right there in front of her when any decent woman would have been wallowing in guilt. But Davis was there, he was in uniform, some type of hospital scrubs-she should have known he wouldn't leave helping people behind. He looked good.

She still wanted him just as much as she ever had. She settled for shifting on her feet, motorcycle helmet heavy and clumsy in her fingers. Did he remember the first time he'd kissed her? She wasn't exactly certain she knew just what he was now. But there he was, between the wall and her exit, breathing in the scent of her like his instincts told him to. Close enough that he could reach out his hand, touch her shoulder, and she knew it would be colder than it had been.

When she put on that helmet she knew there was going to be a cost. She'd warned Clark about rewriting history-but Davis was the only one she would have tried to do it for. For a moment it didn't matter, not her dead husband, not her dead Davis. Only the story that everyone thought they remembered. They thought Davis was dead. They weren't after him now. Doomsday was forced deeper down in him, camouflaged under the persistent need for blood.

"So, I take it you're not waking up naked in dark alleys anymore?"

He shook his head, chin pointed at the ground. She thought she saw a smudge of blood on his cheek. "I'm not in control of myself. Sometimes I feel like even more of a constant head case.  
What about you? Is everything…Clark…?"

Davis had a new name, a seamless new identity and still he sought her out. What could he want? Sometimes she thought she'd given him more than anyone, more than Clark even. He was still the one she had dreams of at night. She was losing her head.

"He calls when he needs me. You know. I'm working for Ollie." Chloe smiled, tried to shake her head, felt like she was failing at both. What was there to say? "Come on. You talk."

She could feel the cold coming off his skin. "I have a roommate now. He's much pickier than you used to be." Davis looked directly into her eyes now instead of scuffing his shoe against the ground. She almost missed it, the way his face would change. "There's a ghost in our apartment. I miss you."

His voice was still soft, his fingers stroking cool and gentle against her cheek. She could feel something inside her chest squeezing tight and choking her. This wasn't supposed to happen. He'd kissed her like this. He could kiss her and there was no husband or fiancé in the world. She wondered if he could feel the déjà vu. He didn't kiss her. He could feel every inch of his body against her and she wanted to sink her nails into his shoulder blades and hold him there. It wasn't right.

"Aiden, why are you here?"

"I needed to know if this was what you wanted. Do you want me to go?"

What could she tell him? Never visit again. Everything she'd done would be for nothing if they found him. She still found herself scanning the halls of Met Gen just to see some scrap of a uniform to remember him by. She hated being alone in the Watchtower sometimes. Hated seeing everyone so happy. Hated that she could never tell anyone how she missed him, least of all him..

"I'm happy for you." She said carefully. "Really happy. You deserve a chance to build your own life. You're a good man, Davis. You deserved a second chance."

"You don't look happy."

"I'm fine." She shook her head, wrapping her hands around the smooth roundness of the helmet between them like a shield, let her neck drop to his shoulder because she was just so tired, tired of rationalizing it to everyone else, to herself. But when he looked at her she could feel, heavy inside her like the sudden flash of black in his eyes.

She could feel him whispering "no" as his lips crushed hers, as he pulled her further out of sight of any passers by. He caught the helmet in his fingers and it rolled carelessly to the ground by their feet. The tingle rolled through her, crushed her against the coolness of his chest and the crinkled blue of his scrubs in her fingernails. He felt as real and corporeal and safe as he had been before, with the monster inside of him and wrapped around her in a tiny motel cot.

And when he gathered her shirt over her head, pressed his lips against her neck, she didn't think about how he could easily rip her throat out, she heard him panting and she felt him shudder and she thought about herself trying to find him in the dark. She wrapped her legs around him, opened her eyes and watched his face. Thought about the darkness, and how someone one probably forget they saw them there. He was quick and shaky, pulling her pants off her hips, cock pressed firm against her inner thigh. Chloe tipped her head back with a small sound.

She'd missed this, missed the sticky reassurance of his chest against hers and the rasp of his hair against her fingers. He moved up into her with the familiar certainty of being loved and then she couldn't breathe, couldn't see couldn't care. She was tired of lying, just for tonight.

The next morning, he took her home and Chloe realized he didn't ask her if she wanted him to leave again.


End file.
